Sunday, January 5, 2014

‘Dead’ US Bank Director Arrested on Fraud Charges 18 Months After Staging Suicide

‘Dead’ US Bank Director Arrested on Fraud Charges 18 Months After Staging Suicide

Stephen Cook 
Category:    Tags: Bank Manager
By Kate Brumback, AP – January 3, 2014
Atlanta, Georgia: A US bank director accused of losing millions of investor dollars before vanishing is set to appear in court.
The US attorney’s office in Savannah said Aubrey Lee Price, 47, is due to appear before a federal judge in Brunswick on Thursday. Price was arrested on Tuesday during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in Brunswick for having tinted windows.
Price is due to face court after staging his death in 2012 with $45 million still missing

Price had disappeared in June 2012 after sending a rambling letter to his family and acquaintances saying he had lost millions of investment dollars and planned to kill himself by jumping off a ferry.
aubrey 1
The FBI released this image of Aubrey Lee Price, which was taken on June 16, 2012 – the day he went missing.

A Florida judge declared him dead about a year ago. But the FBI had said it didn’t believe Price was dead and continued to search for him.
Prosecutors say Price raised $US45 million from his bank and 115 investors, and lost much of the money.
The FBI had added new photos of Price to its wanted poster in July 2012. The surveillance images showed Price at the Key West, Florida, airport and ferry terminal on June 16, 2012 wearing a white long-sleeved T-shirt, tan shorts, sneakers, baseball cap and backpack. He appeared to have changed his baseball cap at some point along the way as he is seen wearing a maroon cap in the photo from the airport and a white cap in the photo from the ferry terminal.
Captured ... the FBI's updated image of Aubrey Lee Price.
Captured … the FBI’s updated image of Aubrey Lee Price.
Authorities have accused him of embezzling millions from a small south Georgia bank after he became a director when a company he controlled bought a controlling share of stock in Montgomery Bank & Trust. The bank was seized by federal regulators in July 2012.
Federal prosecutors in New York have charged Price with wire fraud, and a federal grand jury in Savannah indicted him on charges of bank fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also filed a civil complaint in federal court in Atlanta saying he defrauded investors.
Investigators have said Price left his home in south Georgia on June 16, telling his family he was headed to Guatemala for business. A few days later, Price’s family received letters saying he was going to Key West to board a ferry headed to Fort Meyers and planned to jump off somewhere along the way to end his life, investigators have said.
In a rambling letter to federal investigators that investigators believe was written by Price, he confessed to losing millions through bad investments but denies stealing any money.
His family had told investigators they believed he was dead. FBI investigators had circumstantial evidence that led them to believe Price was still alive, although they didn’t completely rule out suicide during the investigation, Senatore said.
Investigators had previously said Price was known to travel to Venezuela and Guatemala. The wanted poster said he had been known to fund, finance and build churches in South America and to do mission work there. The poster also lists several boats and personal watercraft that Price is known to own.
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